Western Short StorySummons of the MountainTom Sheehan

Western Short Story

“Loggerheads!
Loggerheads! Damned loggerheads the whole damned bunch of them!”
Mountain man Javon “Jake” Kirby, big as the morning breaking over
the peaks behind him, shoulders oxen-wide, a head of hair like flax
or a rich grain of the prairie, had come upon a pile of logs cut to
firewood length, and piled so long that some of them looked rotted
and punky from first sight.

“Those fools,”
he let go with his ravine-deep voice, “probably froze up the winter
after cutting all this pile.” He kept muttering and half cursing
all the time he discarded rotted chunks not worth the flame he might
set to them. He’d ridden into this section on a search for firewood
for the coming winter, to store in his own fuel supply cave higher up
and near his cave home. His cave home, running halfway into the heart
of Beggar’s Peak, was equipped with a small and continuous spring
of water, enough for him and his mule and horse to live on, his catch
of cured skins over a four-year stretch of hunting and prospecting
making the place more comfortable than one would think, yet an
outlandish layout for a man living on and off the mountain.

His mule Tolerance
was loaded 6 times with good firewood and Kirby stacked it in his
storage cave after a full day’s work. Estimating the pile would get
him all the way to March, anything else added to the pile meant a
comfortable spring and a readiness for summer. Once summer weather
came, he’d be off the mountain down to take his first bath of the
new year in a favorite spring.

When winter came
with its first blast of snow and winds, and mother earth began its
first freeze, he gathered snow to make ice and brought the ice to his
food storage. Anxiety for the hunt came upon him and in a matter of
six days had taken down a bear, two deer, an elk and several birds,
all which were skinned and slaughtered and set to freezing.

Comforts of home
were his … until a morning a few weeks later, when he found that a
supply of meat had been taken by a thief. The only signs left were
the obvious moccasin tracks of an Indian. The trail in the rocks and
pathways soon was wiped out and it forced him to alter his sleeping
arrangements. He started a shift and move system where he would swap
sleeping places for one or two nights at a time.

That allowed the
thieving Indian to steal from his home cave one good knife, a handful
of arrows, a box of shells, and a chunk of flint, The selection of
items, and the quantities, made Kirby realize that the thief was
leaving enough for the mountain man to continue on with sufficient
supplies for the winter.

Kirby sensed an
appreciation for the thief, as it warmed his thoughts. “This
brave,” he whispered aloud in the cave, “is positive proof of his
kind taking from the land only what they need. I have to admire his
strength of character, his way of life.” A pause came into his
thinking, and it was like a vow had been made when he uttered with
deep satisfaction, “We are bound and bonded without knowing the
other one.

In the luxury of
compassion, goodwill and acceptance, he let his eyes find the distant
snow-capped peaks, lowered his view to take in the stretch of cliff
faces, the sweep of foothills and one run of grass to its end in a
darkened canyon. He was in love with this locale and it puffed him a
bit that his early dream was neither fruitless nor foreboding and
that he had found it. All of it attained after a seemingly endless
journey and all of it regardless of his unseen visitor and selective
thief. His mass of muscle and bone stood tall and still in its place
as he let his eyes feast on the choicer recesses of this favored
place, the special niches that permitted full entrance to the
mountain itself.

It was mere minutes
later, his composure getting warmer and more pleasant, when he felt
the heart of the mountain take a deep breath and a slow rumble begin
under his feet and end at his ears as a great piece of Beggar’s
Peak came loose for a wild ride down to all lower levels. In the
midst of the disturbed and showery spirals of snow came a shower of
rock dust and small debris that lifted free of the huge hunks of
mountain coming loose. Kirby, from his viewing spot inside the mouth
of his cave, thought they looked like two separate storms and
marveled all the more at the place he knew would hold him in final
rest.

In a moment of
sudden recall, he thought again that the pile, on each of his returns
that day of transfer, had been smaller than when he had left it with
each load on Tolerance’s back. The mysterious Indian brave surely
had been at liberty with the pile of wood. That, too, warmed Kirby
toward the man who did not take more than he needed. He imagined the
Indian to be the kind of man he’d like at his side in a
confrontation of any kind, especially that of survival under
distressful conditions.

The recall of the
log pile came quickly on top of the landslide, as though the thought
had been brought out into the open by the landslide, “a nudge
beyond nudges,” he managed to utter in half disbelief.

At the ceasing of
the mountain’s thunder, the end of spiraling of dust and snow in a
canyon long moaning with wind, and as the majesty of the night
slipped its magic across a sky full of stars, he heard the desperate
moans of an injured man.

Kirby slipped into
his bearskin great coat, grabbed a few items that came to mind, and
left the cave. Faint moans came from his left and he headed toward
the sounds caught in a slight breeze and drifted away. The stars
crowded the skies, the slight breeze whistled on a few rocky corners,
and the faint moans returned; he had never heard an Indian moan, not
in any of his meetings or confrontations.

A distant crack
sounded clear as a gunshot and another chunk of rock took to flight
and with a thundering crash ended its flight in a cluster of fallen
debris.

Then all was quiet
and Kirby continued his approach to the source of the moans.

He saw a hand
first, moving feebly but as if it was waving at him, as if the
wounded man knew Kirby, the man living on the mountain, within the
mountain, was coming to his rescue.

It was an Indian
brave, one he had not seen before, and he supposed he was the one
taking logs from the pile and gear from his cave.

“Are you hurt, my
man? “ Kirby said, and saw the man’s broken arm angling sadly at
his side and one leg caught under a good-sized rock. The injured man,
pinned in place by a piece of the mountain, was an Indian, and Kirby
noted right away he was a Shoshone brave.

The Shoshone
answered, haltingly at first, with serious pauses in his own
language, as though he knew Kirby would understand that approach. He
said, “Ne nanihade weda’ ahtabe. “ (I am someone called Bear
Jaw.) He nodded at his idled arm and then toward the rock on top of
his leg, and continued, “Ne pekkaH gopape beeda’ deaseN
hutsitoon.” (I am afflicted with broken low leg bone and arm.)

Kirby nodded
slowly, taking in some of the language and the graphic scene at his
feet.

“Do you speak any
English?” Kirby said.

“Yes,” Bear Jaw
nodded. “I hurt in two places, Man of the Mountain. My arm and my
leg broken I know. Much pain at first but not now I see you? You will
help Bear Jaw I know. I see you work the mountain as I do. I take
only what I need. You never chase Bear Jaw away.”

Ascertaining the
plight of Bear Jaw, Kirby moved Bear Jaw’s arm into a different
position, quizzically pointed down the trail, and when the Indian
looked in that direction he suddenly jerked the arm back into a
setting position. Bear Jaw emitted but a short grunt, closed his
eyes, and kept still. The leg, once the rock was moved, would take
more effort.

As soon and as
easily as he could, Kirby got Tolerance the mule and rigged a travois
with long poles attached to the mule and moved Bear Jaw back to the
cave he had already visited … and from which he had stolen only
what he needed.

Kirby, as he had
done on other occasions on the road west, needing more effort than
setting the broken arm, set Bear Jaw’s leg, and this time knew
Bear Jaw was human, as only one cry broke from his mouth, but that
cry did come.

In the following
days, recuperation steady on Bear Jaw’s part with assistance from
Jake Kirby, their days were often spent in discussing life on and
about Beggar’s Peak and other peaks in the mountain range.

“Why do you live
here on mountain, leave only once in a long turn?” Bear Jaw asked
one evening as they sat in front of the fire. They had just eaten a
meal of venison, mushrooms and coffee that sat in a great pot near
low flames. Furs lay under them and each man wore skins and hides
that kept them warm and comfortable. Beyond the mouth of the cave in
Beggar’s Peak the stars were bright in their darker beds, some
twinkled with a holiday flickering, and now and then one star would
rush across the cave mouth like a live bullet, coming from one end of
the universe to the other end.

“I was dreaming
half the time and looking for this place half the time. I topped a
rise one day more than a dozen years ago and saw this place. All of
it came to me at once, where I’d live, how I’d live, me and all
that the high god presented to me for finding it. Took me over a week
to find this cave. I’ll be here forever and maybe, somewhere down
the line of years he’ll let somebody find me who’s looking for
the same thing I was looking for.”

It was Bear Jaw,
not dissuaded by Kirby’s response, who kept up the attention on the
stars, but twisted the interest in another direction, and brought
Kirby upright in his spot, when he said, “Stars remind me of stones
my people find in the waters of a stream a great distance to the
north from this mountain.”

Kirby, fully alert,
said, “Not gold like here in the heart of the mountains?” He was
sitting as still as a tree stump and not afraid to give away a little
secret to a man with a broken arm and a broken leg just beginning to
mend.

“Harder than
gold,” Bear Jaw added, making a fine distinction, perhaps quite
intentionally. “Some maidens beat gold with smooth stone to make
--- .“ Here he paused and went into his own language and said,
“Like da-dembohka’.“ Immediately he clarified the new word and
said, “Like buttons that shine for boots or great coats. “ The
pause again was significant, as he continued his explanation. “Cannot
change shape of these stream stones by hitting with bigger stone.
They break in pieces, have small shine then, in pieces.”

“No name for
these hard stones?” Kirby could guarantee there’d be no word
coming like “diamonds.” It wouldn’t fit.

“Okaipin dembi
da’ziyumbi,” Bear Jaw said. “River stone shine like star.”
His smile was wide, his eyes saying there was a mystery to it all
that would forever remain within the tribe.

It told Kirby he’d
get no other direction than “a great distance to the north.” He’d
have to be satisfied with that.

But it was Kirby’s
turn to move the conversation. “What brought you to this mountain?
To this place where I have never seen you but knew you were around?”

“The high god you
know,” said Bear Jaw, “called me from my tipi in the middle of
the night and let the stars point the way. My people did not
understand me when I left our village but all believe me after I
leave. They never come after me. Never leave things for me. Let me
keep promise to the high god to live in the mountains. My tipi here,
across the canyon, much like this cave. We will visit one day when I
can walk there again.”

“What did he say
to you?”

Bear Jaw smiled
again, a gleam caught in his eyes. “He say, ‘Go where White Hair
lives. When it is time, White Hair will be brother to Bear Jaw.”
Came then another pause in the red man who speaks with wisdom from
his tongue, “Perhaps a new world starts here in one small mountain
that will loom over all mountains.”

The mountain talks
and we listen to the mountain … but not often enough, or long
enough.